As a founder member of Mystery Women in 1997, promoting Crime Fiction has always been my passion.
Following the closure of Mystery Women, a new group was formed on 30th January 2012 promoting crime fiction.
New reviews are posted daily, but to search for earlier reviews please click on the Mystery People link below and select 'reviews' from the welcome page. This will displays an alphabetic option for you to find the review you would like to read

Recent Events

For PREVIOUS REVIEWS- Click on MYSTERY PEOPLE below -

Thursday, 20 November 2014

‘Extinction’ by J T Brannan

Published by Headline,

27 February 2014.
ISBN: 978-1-4722-0680-0

A religious statue moves, a
tsunami destroys an entire island population, birds attack and bring down
aeroplanes and pampered pet dogs simultaneously turn on and kill their owners.
With no official explanation and people in fear all over the world, apocalyptic
cult leaders are claiming more followers by the day, convincing them that the
end times are near.

When investigative
journalist Alyssa Durham gets a call to meet her old friend Karl Janklow, who
works as a systems engineer for the government, she is intrigued to learn he
believes that these phenomena are not natural events. But before he can say
more, he is murdered in front of her.

As civilised society crumbles
around her, Alyssa manages to avoid the rioters and looters and join with
Karl's colleague Jack Murray in a bid to discover the truth. Hunted by Jack and
Karl's former boss, the unrelenting Colonel Anderson, they must remain hidden
as they strive to tell the world what is going on. As the end of the world
seems to draw ever closer, old alliances go out the window as friends and
enemies gather for one last desperate fight.

The author is single
minded in his pursuit of the story: neither personal relationships nor emotions
are allowed to get in the way of this well-paced thriller. There are some
themes that shine through however: feminism is one of them. Gratifyingly and
unusually, Alyssa is both physically and mentally the strongest character,
outwitting her nemesis time and again and pulling the good looking Jack along
with her, enjoying him much as Jack Reacher enjoys the attentions of the women
he meets on his escapades, although she does ultimately admit her feelings for
him.

Loss is another significant
theme - of people (as well as her friend Karl, Alyssa had tragically lost her
husband and daughter, yet seems only to be stronger for it); and, more
interestingly, loss of authority and the status quo, as the author explores how
people would react if they thought the end of the world was coming and
traditional authority figures were impotent to prevent it; it makes for a
damning reflection on man's lack of humanity to his fellow man, as, in fact,
does the premise of the whole novel.

Interestingly, the final
theme, technology, is presented as both necessary and evil: although it helps
the heroes in their quest, it is also at the root of the successes of the
anti-heroes as well, allowing them unprecedented powers to track and attack
Alyssa and Jack.

Overall, while this is a
thoroughly thrilling, action packed adventure that takes the reader by the hand
and blasts through seemingly inescapable situations with ease, it is also at
its core, a thought-provoking cautionary tale about the nature of power, humanity
and authority.

------

Reviewer: Joanna Leigh

JT
Brannan trained
as a British Army officer at Sandhurst, before deciding to pursue a writing
career. A former national karate champion, he now teaches karate, MMA, and his
own system of reality-based self-defence. He lives near Harrogate with his wife
and two young children. Extinction is his second novel.

Joanna Leigh studied French and German at university. She works in
the aerospace industry and is a chartered marketer in the UK. She describes herself as a
voracious reader, enjoying genres as varied as crime thrillers, historical
fiction and autobiographies. Joanna lives in London. She is the daughter of crime thriller
writer Leigh Russell.

No comments:

Post a Comment

About Me

From an early age I have been a lover of crime fiction. Discovering like minded people at my first crime conference at St Hilda’s Oxford in 1997, I was delighted when asked to join a new group for the promotion of female crime writers. In 1998 I took over the running of the group, which I did for the next thirteen years.
During that time I organised countless events promoting crime writers and in particular new writers. But apart from the sheer joy of reading, ‘I actually love books, not just the writing, the plot or the characters, but the sheer joy of holding a book has never abated for me. The greatest gift of my life has been the ability to read'.